Then and now

Chapter 4: Asher's POV

We walk into the cafe to find a couple of small tables scattered around, all empty. The place is cute with a theme that centres around flowers and timberwood. There is a nice, rosemary smell that gives the place a comforting vibe to it.

There's an old lady behind the counter who smiles warmly at us as we approach.

"Well aren't you kids cute! What can I get ya?" She has a strong southern accent that almost makes me laugh.

"I'll get black coffee, please." I look at Amira and make a questioning face. Who only gets coffee? I'll ask her about this madness later.

"Two croissants please." 

The waitress tells us to sit down after I pay. She brings us our food just as we sit down.

I find myself struggling with what to say. There is just so much to say to her, and I don't know where to start.

"What- " I stop myself, "How are you?"

She looks at me like the question confuses her. I thought it was pretty simple.

"Uh. Fine, I guess. You?"

I want to press and ask how she really is, but I'll leave that to another time. I can tell that she isn't %100 okay. Just by the way she speaks. I know that I haven't seen her in a while, but I know her well enough to tell that she isn't herself.

"Good, I guess. I hate the fact that I have to move schools again. It feels like I had only just gotten settled in at my school in New York."

"Where did you go to school in New York?" I smile at the fact that she actually seems engaged in this conversation. 

"I went to a private school called George Trivett High School. It was full of snobby rich kids." 

She cringes when I say private school, not caring about hiding her disgust. 

"I hate private school kids. No offense." 

"I'm not a private school kid anymore. None taken," I say while shaking my head. She runs her hand through her hair. I realize that I haven't taken my eyes off her since we sat down, and I hope that I'm not making her uncomfortable. I like the way that the sun is hitting her brown eyes, making them look almost hazel. 

We talk some more about meaningless things, and I have been stopping myself from asking the question that I most want the answer to. Once our food comes, I just come out and say it. 

"Why did you stop calling?" My voice breaks in the middle of the sentence, showing my nervousness. 

She hesitates- clearly caught off guard by my question. She takes a sip of her coffee before answering. 

"I didn't. I got a new number and texted you a million times from it. You're the one who stopped replying to me."  She is calm and nonchalant. I could just scream. 

"I never got any texts." I cast my mind back to when we lost contact when I was about 15. I do not remember getting anything from an unknown number back then. 

She is silent, waiting for me to say something. 

"Wait- when I was 15 my mum set up something on my phone that stopped unknown numbers from contacting me, because I kept getting scam texts and falling for them. Could that be why?" I run my hands down my face in realization. 

"Yeah, probably. Why didn't you just reach out to me by socials or something?" She looks genuinely hurt- which is different from the usual empty look in her eyes. Might even be an improvement. 

"I don't know. I thought that you didn't want to talk to me, and that's why you stopped contacting me." I take a big bite out of my croissant trying to hide my frustration. Of course, it was a miscommunication. Here I thought that she never wanted to talk to me, while she was thinking the same thing across the country. 

"That's what I thought. I was sad, you know. That you uh- stopped contacting me." She looks uncomfortable at expressing her feelings. It does surprise me that she was sad, I didn't think I had as much of an impact on her life as she did on mine. 

"Yeah. So was I. I'm glad that we can be friends now though," I smile and she blushes and looks down at her lap. Her hair falls over her face in a graceful manner, and when she looks back to meet my eye she brushes it out of her face gently. 

Amira clears her throat, "Yeah." 

For the rest of the time that we are at this cafe, I do most of the talking and she just listens. I told her about all of the people that used to live in my apartment block. I tell her about all of the fucking mischief we used to get up to at school. Once, I even got suspended for smoking weed on the field with a bunch of kids. Never again. I walked into class high as fuck, and got caught almost straight away.

She mainly just nods her head. Sometimes she lets out a little laugh, and that always makes my heart flutter. The fact that she doesn't laugh much just makes it so much more rewarding when she does. 

A/N

This chapter was so hard to write for what? I love writing chapters with dialoge but this one wasn't easy hahaha. Not overly happy with this chapter, but we will keep pushing. Will publish next chapter in the next hour or so. 

PS: Wishing you a great day!